Musings of a Twenty Something

A New Year, A New Challenge

My first blog post of the New Year! I’m really excited to see what 2017 has in store (as if I haven’t spoken enough about this already), and to celebrate new beginnings, I’ve decided to throw myself in a month-long challenge.

Last night, before the big celebration, I decided to watch a documentary on Netflix. Throughout the month of December, I was so focused on watching Christmas movies—when I wasn’t swamped with other tasks—that I didn’t make any time to get through my long list of must-sees on Netflix. The new year seemed like a great time to get back to it, so I started with Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. I’ve read a lot of positive Facebook statuses from people who enjoyed this documentary and it seemed right up my alley. Little did I know how much I would come to realize I needed it at this point in my life.

Let me take you a step backwards for a second. As a Christmas gift from Mike’s sister-in-law, I received the book True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh. I’m only halfway through this book, but I already get the sense that it’s going to do wonders for my personal struggles. Its primary focus is to help people overcome the obstacles in their love life, but it goes much farther than that. One of the primary teachings of this book is to be mindful and to practice meditation to be in the present moment at all times. I know it sounds a little corny and far fetched, but I promise it’s anything but. My number one goal for 2017 is to be in a constant state of mindfulness and I think this book is going to help me when I stray from this goal. I’m sure it will also help when the stress of wedding planning puts me on edge with Mike. Haha.

Okay, cut back to the Netflix documentary. To me, the concept of minimalism—to surround yourself with only the things you need—goes hand in hand with mindfulness. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, the men behind the film, talk a lot about how getting rid of “stuff” and living a life of less can help you live a life of more. And that’s the point behind mindfulness too, to live a life of more. To live a life in the present. Which ultimately leads to true happiness.

And now we get to the challenge part of this post. Before bed, I was browsing through Pinterest (as it usually puts me to sleep fairly quickly) and I came across this recommended pin:

I think the challenge is a great place to start if, like me, you want to live a more fulfilling life but aren’t sure how to begin. Today I went through my email and cleared through my inbox, along with unsubscribing to most of the junk emails I just end up deleting without bothering to open. I feel better already and cannot wait to work through each daily challenge this January.

If you’d like to learn more about minimalism, I suggest watching the documentary or reading up about what The Minimalists are doing by visiting their site that I have linked above. This isn’t some ad or a sponsored post—I’m just really into this way of life that they are trying to give awareness to across the US. And I think we could all benefit from living a life with less stuff and more meaning.

You can also find True Love for an affordable price on Amazon. This is a book I want to gift to everyone I know because it’s so beneficial. So if you don’t buy it, expect to receive it anyway 😉

I’ll check back in at the end of January to let you know how my journey with minimalism has progressed. If you’d like to join me, I’d love to hear about your progress as well! 🙂